


Heartstrings Come Undone

by uncoined



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sex, i'll add more tags as i update chapters, in the closet, like very very light
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26116732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uncoined/pseuds/uncoined
Relationships: Sam/Shane (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

When Shane came out of the bathroom, he heard sniffles. 

He stopped outside the door, still busy rebuckling his belt as he listened. It was hard to tell from the background murmurs of the saloon, but someone was definitely crying in the back storage room. Or at the very least, someone was suffering from a bad allergy attack. 

An instinct deep inside Shane told him to investigate. Maybe it was just because he was drunk, but something moved his legs toward the back room and his arms to the heavy wooden door. Whoever he expected to see sitting on the floor crying to themselves, it hadn’t been Sam.

Sam’s head popped up from where his hands had been cradling it, his eyes wide and red. He stood quickly, wiping at his face. “S-sorry, ‘s just allergies.”

“Yeah, and I’m the mayor,” Shane scoffed, quietly closing the door behind him as he entered the storage room. The door was surprisingly insulated against noise, and Shane wondered how he’d been able to hear Sam at all. “What’s wrong with you?”

“N-nothing! I told you, it’s just allergies,” Sam repeated defensively, still wiping away fresh tears.

Shane lingered by the door as he thought about what to say. Something about seeing this ever-sunny kid crying in the dark back room of a bar made Shane’s heart twist. He was still dimly aware he was drunk, but even so, he wanted to do what he could to get the stupid blonde to smile again.

“Guess this is as good a place as any to have a breakdown,” Shane mumbled, glancing around the room with an air of nonchalance. “I’ll have to come in here next time I feel like having a good cry.”

“Stop making fun of me,” Sam said through gritted teeth.

“I’m not.”

Sam held Shane’s serious gaze for a moment, and his defensive façade faltered. Sam’s shoulders sagged and he sighed, studying the floorboards.

“My dad’s regiment got captured in battle,” Sam admitted, tears already watering his eyes. “I- I just got a text from my mom. I didn’t want to ruin the mood out there, but I just— I had to go somewhere, and I—”

“Shit, kid, that sucks,” Shane said lamely, kicking himself for not being able to say something more profound. He cleared his throat and walked toward the kid, roughly patting him on the shoulder in an attempt to show some sort of masculine affection. “You’ll get through it. It’s hard to lose people you care about… but, uh, hey, he was just captured, right? So he’s probably still alive?”

Sam’s bottom lip quivered. “M-maybe.”

 _Foot, meet mouth._

Shane withdrew his hand and sucked in a breath. “Well, uh, misery loves company, so if you wanna be miserable around someone who won’t hold it against you, you uh… you know where t’find me.”

Shane almost immediately regretted his offer. He really did not want to become Sam’s emotional support dog that he told all his problems to, mostly because Shane did not care about any of Sam’s problems. But it made the kid smile, so Shane figured it must be worth it. His one good deed for the day, or some shit. 

Sam’s smile was small and shaky, but it was there. “Thanks man, that- that means a lot. It’s just hard when everyone expects me to be the happy-go-lucky guy all the time, ya know?”

Sam cleared his throat and wiped at his face again. “Gotta go back out there, or they’ll start to think somthin’s up,” he joked, his laugh still shaky from crying. Sam gave Shane a light pat on the shoulder before leaving the back room to rejoin his friends at the pool table.

Shane exhaled, feeling like he just made a terrible mistake.


	2. Chapter 2

Shane probably should’ve expected Sam to talk his ear off the next Monday at work. The kid was nearly back to his normal annoyingly peppy self, but the waver in his voice and the slouch in his shoulders was unmistakable. Or at least to Shane, it was. Shane sometimes wondered how dense some of the other townsfolk were to just not _see_ things that were so plainly there, like Penny’s abusive mother or Abigail and Sebastian’s disgusting pining or Sam’s sunny façade or, hell, Shane’s fucking depression. 

“I’ve got good news! Sorta,” Sam grinned as he mopped his way to Shane, who was silently restocking soup cans. Shane didn’t move to acknowledge him, but that didn’t seem to deter Sam’s rambling. “So we heard on the news that my dad’s regiment was captured mostly alive, which is good cuz that means he’s probably still alive! I mean, there’s still that chance, but…”

Shane glanced at Sam’s sagging shoulders. “But a slim chance,” Shane mumbled in offering. 

Sam grinned. “Exactly. Now I just hope those Gotoro goons don’t do anything bad to him while he’s imprisoned…” 

Both men shuddered at the thought.

“Nah, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Shane said in that same nonchalant tone he used sometimes with Jas when he tried to abate her anxieties. “He’s gotta be a tough guy to survive in the military this long.”

“Oh, yeah, my dad’s super tough,” Sam grinned, completely ignoring the mop in his hands now. “I mean it’s been a while since I’ve seen him, but… yeah, he’s a good guy. I miss him.”

Shane hummed in understanding. “It’s tough losing a parent. Even if they’re not, you know… It’s still tough.”

“Have you lost a parent?”

Shane slammed down a can of soup on the metal shelf, the loud _clang!_ making Sam jump. Shane had said too much.

“Don’t you have a job to be doing, Sam?” Shane hissed, donning his familiar sneer but not quite looking Sam in the eyes.

“Oh, y-yeah, sorry, man.” Sam shuffled off with his mop, leaving a wet trail of waxy water behind him. 

Shane didn’t know how the kid had gotten him to talk so openly, but Shane didn’t like it. His whole _‘thing’_ was being the brooding asshole in the corner no one liked or wanted to talk to. It had taken months to get that into Sam’s thick skull, and now a single night had undone all of Shane’s hard work of assholery. And he just _couldn’t_ summon the hatred to do it all again. He didn’t like seeing the kid sad. It made his heart twist in a weird way that Shane had never really felt before.

Shane stacked and stacked and stacked for the rest of the day, the mindless automation taking away any sense of time Shane had. On the one hand, it felt literally never-ending, while on the other hand, the day was over before Shane could even think about it. He was in the back room gathering his things when Sam walked in to do the same.

There was an awkward silence between them, and Shane tried to quickly shuffle his things out of his work locker before Sam had a chance to break the silence.

“Hey, Shane…”

Well, so much for that.

“…I, uh, I just wanted to say thanks for putting up with me earlier. And the other night, too. I know I can be kind of annoying sometimes, but, like, I just can’t talk about this stuff with anyone else. My mom’s going through it way worse than me, Vince is just a kid, and my friends… I don’t know, they’re not great with this kind of stuff. I don’t like feeling like a burden, I guess. …Ha, sorry, I’m rambling again. Anyway, thanks for listening.”

Shane listened to Sam’s speech with his eyes glued to the floor and his hands deep in his pockets. He’d been stoic as Sam had spoken, but as he took in Sam’s insecurities, a laugh rumbled in Shane’s chest that he couldn’t help. It was a low, sardonic chuckle that Shane tried to shake away, but the irony was too palpable to ignore. Sam tensed.

“Dude, what the heck? Don’t laugh at me,” Sam snapped, and when Shane looked up into his face, his eyes were full of hurt. 

“Wait- shit, no, no, I wasn’t laughing at you,” Shane said between breaths, following Sam out the break room door and out onto the dim JojaMart shopping floor. 

“You’re still laughing at me! God, you’re a real jerk, you know that?”

“No, just wait,” Shane grabbed Sam’s arm, stopping him and spinning him slightly toward Shane. Shane bit down the rest of his body’s laughter. “I’m not laughing at you, okay? I know it- it looked like that, but I was just laughing because… I don’t know, it’s just really ironic to me that someone so happy and outgoing like you would have the same insecurities that someone like me has.”

A pause. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s like—” Shane exhaled sharply, thankful the rim of his work cap was shrouding his eyes right now. “Funny, weird, ironic, or whatever? that you would share anything in common with a moody gloomy asshole like me. Th-that’s all.”

Shane shoved his hands in his pockets as he stared at the linoleum floor, waiting for a response. 

“But you’re not _that_ bad.” 

_“Wow.”_

“Wait, that’s not what I meant!” Sam protested with a short breathy laugh. Shane looked up at the kid and couldn’t help but smirk at his flustered expression. Now he looked how Shane felt. “Shane, you’re a great guy. You’re just too hard on yourself, man.”

Shane’s smile faltered. The sincerity in Sam’s eyes was so _strong_ it made Shane squirm, and that same twisting feeling in his heart returned. Sam took Shane’s silence as an answer, lightly patting Shane’s arm again in the same parting gesture he’d used in the saloon. This time, though, Sam’s hand lingered for just a moment, the smallest of moments, brushing down Shane’s arm as he pulled away. Sam smiled and nodded, before turning and walking down the dark aisle and out the Joja doors.

Shane realized what that twisting feeling in his heart was. It was a crush.

**Author's Note:**

> im writing this as a sort of creative outlet away from my main fic, so im not sure how often i'll be able to update it! im mostly just having fun exploring these characters and giving this rarepair the attention it deserves.


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